Wright
There is some degree of freedom and variability in how the parts function, but basically they constitute a totality of functional interdependency. If you remove critical parts of the whole or try to dramatically transform them, the whole disintegrates. An alternative metaphor is that a social system is more like an ecosystem. Think of society like a pond. A pond contains many species of fish, insects, and plants. Sometimes an alien species is introduced to an ecosystem and it thrives; sometimes it does not. Some ecosystems are quite fragile and easily disrupted; others can tolerate quite significant intrusions of invasive species without being seriously affected. If you think of society as an ecosystem, it still is the case that everything is interdependent, but interactions do not constitute a tightly functionalized totality. This opens up a different way of imagining alternatives. One way to transform an ecosystem is to introduce an alien species that initially finds a niche and then gradually displaces certain other species. The idea of real utopias as a way of transforming a society is more in line with the ecosystem view of society than with the organismic view. The second general comment about alternatives concerns two contrasting ways of thinking about how to make the world a better place—ameliorative reforms and real utopian transformations. Ameliorative reforms look at existing institutions, identify their flaws, and propose improvements that can be enacted. These improvements matter—they reduce harms and enhance flourishing—but they are limited to proposals that directly act on existing structures and move one step beyond. Real utopias, in contrast, envision the contours of an alternative social world that embodies emancipatory ideals and then look for social innovations we can create in the world as it is that move us toward that destination. Sometimes, this turns out to be the same as an ameliorative reform, but often ameliorative reforms do not constitute building blocks of an emancipatory alternative. Consider, for example, affirmative action policies around race. Affirmative action is one of the critical policies for combating the pernicious effects
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of ongoing racism, not merely the legacies of racism in the past. But affirmative action is not, I would argue, a building block of a world of racial justice and emancipation. It is a necessary means to move toward such a world, but it is not itself a constituent element of the alternative that we seek. To embrace real utopias in this way is not to reject ameliorative reforms. In the practical world of struggling to create the social conditions for human flourishing it is important to be a pragmatic idealist. Often this means muddling through with patchwork programs that do not prefigure emancipatory alternatives. Sometimes this is the best one can do. But sometimes it is possible to move struggles for equality, democracy, and sustainability beyond such narrow constraints and create institutions that are constitutive of a more profound alternative.
EXAMPLES As a practical object of research, the study of real utopias mainly focuses on institutions that in way or another prefigure more radical emancipatory alternatives. Sometimes these are created in contexts of political struggles; other times they emerge quietly, without sharp confrontations. Sometimes they are in deep tension with dominant institutions; other times they occupy nonthreatening niches in the socioeconomic ecosystem. Before elaborating a systematic theoretical map of real utopian alternatives to capitalism, it will be useful to briefly describe a number of specific examples. Most of these are discussed in more detail in Wright (2010). Participatory budgeting. Participatory budgeting (PB) is a transformation of the way urban budgets are created. Instead of technical experts working with politicians to create city budgets, budgets are created by ordinary citizens meeting in popular assemblies and voting on budget alternatives. In the PB model initiated in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre in the early 1990s by the Brazilian Workers Party, neighborhood assemblies throughout the city were empowered to debate budgetary